"I
don't recall prosecuting anybody this age for murder or anything else that
comes to mind," Benedict said.

It
was not immediately clear when Meyer would be arrested. He was being evaluated
by psychiatrists at John Dempsey Hospital, authorities said.

Marsha
Morris, one of the couple's two daughters, decried the decision to charge
her father.

"Not
an 89-year-old man," she said. "He can hardly walk any more. It
was an act of mercy."

"It's
surreal, like it's someone else's family," she said.

Police
said Meyer, who uses a wheelchair, calmly admitted to officers on March 24
that he had suffocated his wife at the Northbridge Health Care Center in Bridgeport.
Cornelia Meyer had been suffering from a chronic illness and was in constant
pain, police said.

"It
was a fairly easy call based on his confession," Benedict said. "It's
tragic. But regardless of the amount of pathos involved, our duty is to prosecute
and enforce Connecticut's laws. This is clearly a violation of the murder
statute."

Meyer,
who was married to his wife for 63 years, told police that his wife had begged
him to help her die so he made his way to her bed and held a pillow over her
face until she had stopped breathing.

"There's
evidence that suggests she had some suicidal tendencies and there were requests
to her husband to help her succeed in that," Brenner said last week.

Morris
said her parents were private people who were devoted to each other, "more
than anyone could be."

"There
were just a loving couple for 63 years," she said. "They just kept
to themselves."

Morris
said her father, a retired machinist at Sikorsky Aircraft, was never violent.